“DO THESE JEANS make my ass look big?” Men don’t like this question. And when their wife or girlfriend ask it, they know to tread lightly. Unless the relationship is on the outs. In which case they may answer with something like, “No, it’s your fat ass that makes those jeans look big.”

If the man cares for the woman. If he loves her. If he ever expects to have sex with her again, he’ll say something nice. No matter how much more of her there is to love back there. It’s called a white lie. Normally, we don’t base our relationships on lies. But when it comes to the butt, though, lies are good. They spare hurt feelings. Should a person’s genes not bless them with a heavenly derriere to display in a tight pair of jeans.

White lies don’t hurt people. In fact, we use them in order not to hurt people. Such lies don’t have consequences. And people may know you are lying. Even expect you to lie. It shows you care enough to make someone feel better about something you know they’re sensitive about. Like her big butt. Or his performance in bed (“Whew, that was the best five minutes of my life. Really.”).

WHEN YOUR CHILD IS learning a musical instrument, he may make more noise than music. But you encourage him. Or her. You tell them they’re good. That they’re getting better every day. And, yes, you would love for them to play in front of your visiting family. And when they do, the family applauds and tells them they’re good, too. Your child is encouraged. And he or she keeps practicing. A little white lie and no one gets hurt.

Suppose your daughter wants to sing. She listens to the reigning pop queens and sings along. Only thing is, she’s tone deaf. She doesn’t sing well at all. In fact, when she does sing, you start looking for a hurt cat because you’re sure no human could make such inhuman noise. But you don’t want to hurt her feelings. And you’re sure it’s just a passing phase. So you tell her how wonderful she sounds. No one gets hurt. Nothing can go wrong with that, can it?

Well, suppose her school is having a talent show. Anyone can simply walk up to an open mike and do whatever they want. And she wants to sing. In front of her friends. In front of her classmates. In front of the 2 kids that always tease her. Now the issue is a little more complex. Do you tell her the truth about her singing and hurt her feelings. Or do you let her sing. And risk the kids laughing at her. And teasing her about it afterwards?

BUT IT’S NOT just the white lies we want to hear. Say your husband is staying later and later at work. You call to see what time to expect him for dinner but there’s no answer. When he comes home late you tell him you were worried. You called and there was no answer. He apologizes for worrying you and says he was with a client. You’re relieved.

Or you come home from work and your wife isn’t there. Concerned, you call her and there’s no answer. When she comes home she says she was at the gym with a friend and left her cell in her gym bag. You’re relieved. Then she goes upstairs to shower. Funny, you think. She usually showers at the gym.

Learning about infidelity is not easy. And it’s painful. You ignore signs as long as you can. You believe the lies. You want to. You need to. Then you find an earring in the car that isn’t yours. Or you bump into your wife’s friend who says she misses her now that she quit going to the gym. Soon, the evidence forces you to face the awful truth. And it kills you inside. Divorce. The children. It’s just the beginning of so much bad to come.

SO WE LIKE it when people lie to us. At times. For the truth can be disagreeable. Ugly. Painful. And we’d rather not have that pain.No, we’d rather live life in a sitcom where there is always a good laugh and rarely anything bad ever happens.

Politicians know this. They know that most people don’t like the harsh realities of life. So when they need to get elected, they lie to us. No one wants to pay more taxes. So the politicians promise that only the rich will pay any new taxes. But massive government spending requires massive taxation. And taxing the rich just can’t pay for it all.

George Herbert Walker Bush promised no new taxes. He said, “Read my lips. No new taxes.” He raised them. Didn’t want to. Said he had to. To balance the budget. Because he and Congress didn’t want to cut spending. Same with Bill Clinton. He promised there would be no middle class tax increase. But there was. He said he tried as hard as he could not to but had to. Again, the spending thing. No one wants to cut spending. It doesn’t help win elections.

But we wanted to believe the lie during the campaign. They promise us everything and say it won’t cost anything. That’s what we want to hear. We don’t want to hear the intricacies of monetary and fiscal policy. That increased taxation dampens economic activity. Decreases incentive for risk takers. So they take fewer risks. Create fewer jobs. Which increases unemployment. But we don’t want to hear this. We just want the free stuff. Just promise it. Tell us it’s free. And we’ll vote for you.

LITTLE WHITE LIES have little consequence. We say them because we care about someone. Other lies, though, do. Big ones. If we fall for them. If we believe in an ever-expanding welfare state, we’ll keep voting ourselves the treasury. Until we’ve emptied it. And when there’s no more money, we’ll say, well, it was nice while it lasted. But all good things must come to an end. Or we’ll riot.

Or we’ll cut spending elsewhere to fund our insatiable appetite for free stuff. Maybe we won’t build a new aircraft carrier. Or we’ll close an overseas Air Force base. Or we’ll reduce the size of our conventional forces. Because we’ve been lulled into a false sense of security, we may think a large standing army is not necessary anymore. But it was that large projection of force that gave us that sense of security. It scared the bad guys. Because the ability to project force, and the will to do so, will create consequences if the bad guys do act.

During the dot.com boom of the 1990s, times were good and we got complacent. During those good times, though, the bad guys hit Americans in a series of attacks (World Trade Center bombing, Tanzanian Embassy bombing, Kenyan Embassy bombing, Khobar Towers bombing, the USS Cole attack). We didn’t fight back. We lied to ourselves. We didn’t want to believe that America was under attack. Head in the sand, we wanted to continue to enjoy the good times. This only emboldened our enemies. They saw that America didn’t have the will to fight back. So they upped the ante. And in 2001, they attacked on 9/11. And that attack was just too great not to awake a slumbering giant.

WE MAY NOT like the unpleasant things in life. But they are part of life. And we have to deal with them. However unpleasant they are. They are what they are. No matter how we try to rationalize them away.